


Nice Work If You Can Get It

by churchkey



Series: Winnix Ficlets (originally posted to Tumblr) [1]
Category: Band of Brothers (TV 2001)
Genre: Flashback, Implied speirton, M/M, PDA, Pegasus - Freeform, VE Day, drunk officers, kiss prompt, lap kisses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-29
Updated: 2021-01-29
Packaged: 2021-03-15 13:42:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29065260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/churchkey/pseuds/churchkey
Summary: Written for a Tumblr Kiss Prompt meme:kisses where one person is sitting in the other’s lapAnd inspired by that photo. You know the one.
Relationships: Lewis Nixon/Richard Winters
Series: Winnix Ficlets (originally posted to Tumblr) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2132430
Comments: 8
Kudos: 47





	Nice Work If You Can Get It

**Author's Note:**

> I've decided to post my Tumblr ficlets as a series because I sort of forgot that I wrote them and don't want Tumblr to eat them. Written quickly at various points throughout the past year in response to some lovely asks - thank you for those <3

By the time Dick joined them on the balcony, they’d been drinking for a solid seven hours and looked like it too. Speirs was slumped Lipton-ward on the settee, his body sprawled so languidly that Dick wondered how he kept from oozing down onto the stone floor. Harry was settled deep into the chair opposite Nix, his arms dangling over the sides and his head moving in constant, lopsided waves among all three of them, while Nix, well. 

Nix was just his regal self. Same generous smile; same kind, dark eyes. Balancing a bottle of wine on his thigh and resting one boot on the opposite knee, he looked like he just belonged there, like a sovereign gazing proudly upon the vast beauty of his Alpine kingdom. 

“Here you are,” Dick said as he approached them. “The neighbors have started to complain.”

Harry laughed. “What, this little tea party?”

“Some gang of officers behaving like rowdy sailors on shore leave. I said, ‘you can't mean _my_ staff’. Figured I’d better come see for myself.”

“Well si’down, since you’re here”, Ron slurred. “Stay awhile.” 

The rest of the guys echoed him, a chorus of “Yeah” and “Come on”, not seeming to realize that there was nowhere for him to sit. Dick’s eyes swept over the empty bottles strewn haphazardly across the table, the misty mountains in the distance, and landed on Nix, whose lips fluttered in the briefest smile as he sat up straighter in his chair and dropped his eyes to the armrest in invitation. 

Their bodies slid together like magnets, Dick perched on the arm of Nix’s chair, Nix’s arm draped around the back. Though they weren’t actually touching, it struck him as deeply intimate and mundane at the same time, sharing a chair with Nix in the same way they’d shared everything else. Everything they had, everything they’d clawed and scrabbled for, every victory they’d won, it all belonged to both of them. There was no separation. 

The guys laughed and drank, laughed and drank. Dick faded into the background, now and again turning his head toward Nix to murmur a question into his ear, which Lew would answer under his breath in a voice reserved for Dick. _“Is Lip drunk?” “Hard to say.” “Did Harry piss himself?” “No, that’s champagne”._

“Come on,” Harry was saying, holding a bottle in his outstretched arm. “Have a drink with us, Dick. Major. Major Dick.” He was so busy laughing at his own dumb joke that he didn’t react when Nix wrapped his arm around Dick’s waist and pulled him down to his lap. 

“Who, this guy?” Nix said. “He’s been drinking all day, we need to cut him off. Look at him, he can’t even sit up straight.”

Dick was indeed struggling to regain his balance, trying in vain to keep some measure of distance between his body and Lew's. He figured he must look ridiculous, wedged between the chair’s arm and Lew’s right leg. And then he remembered that the war was over, and that everyone was drunk, and that Nix was his… Nix was his. For a little while longer. He gave up the fight and settled in, draped his arm around the back of the chair and leaned into the rise and fall of Lew's chest. Lew’s hand on his hip. Lew’s voice in his head.

_Don’t you ever stop working?_

Everyone else was in the barn celebrating the success of Pegasus, doing their part to nurture the Special Relationship. As he’d listened to them from the attic of the farmhouse, Dick felt the anxiety slowly leave his body, felt the relief pour in on deep, full breaths of cool night air. But he knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep for hours yet, so he’d opened his Infantry Field Manual and begun reading it over again, committing its maneuvers and tactics to memory. 

At first he’d thought Nix was just stopping by for another refill from his dwindling stock, but he didn’t even glance toward Dick’s footlocker as he climbed the steps and slowly crossed the room. 

“Don’t you ever stop working?” he’d asked, like he’d been sent on a special mission to distract Dick, disrupt his routine and impose a new world order on his life. Like he’d been doing since the day they’d met. 

The protest Dick mounted was perfunctory at best, just rolling his eyes as Lew perched himself on the edge of the desk, knees wide, blocking access to his papers and books and every other trivial concern. But it was Dick who first made contact, sliding his palms up Lew’s thighs to take him by the hips and pull him down to his lap, and it was Dick who thrust his tongue into Lew’s mouth as vulgar images flashed through his mind, all the other places he would put his tongue if given the chance. The far reaches he’d touch, the depths he would plumb.

And as they began the mindless grind, the desperate rocking of their hips against the hardness swelling between them, it was Dick who finally broke away, breathless, to say they should stop now or they’d have a mess on their hands. 

“Yeah,” Lew chuckled, his voice dark and low, scraping his teeth along the taut muscles of Dick’s throat. “That’s kind of the point, Valentino.” 

“I know, but - “ Dick sat back in his chair and looked down at the wrinkled shirt tails he’d yanked from Lew’s trousers. “Not like this.”

The suddenness with which Lew stood and began righting himself, tucking in his shirt, finger-combing his hair, made Dick worry briefly if he’d done something to offend him. 

“What’s going on?” he asked cautiously, but Lew just gave him a confused look, like he’d missed something very obvious. 

“Well aren’t we going to your room?”

It was the first time they made love in a proper bed, the first time they undressed completely and felt the warmth and surprise of each other’s skin against cool cotton sheets. It was the first time it occurred to Dick to call what they did ‘making love’, and not just opening a release valve and blowing off a little steam. And it was the first time he dared consider that maybe he’d known all along that they were never going to be just friends, that while they were running up mountains and memorizing sand tables and jumping out of planes, maybe they were also falling in love.

When it was over and he was lying there with Lew sprawled heavily across his chest, tracing aimless designs across Lew’s shoulders with his fingertips, Dick couldn’t help but think:

_A fellow could get used to this._

And then a fear gripped his heart, a warning so loud and insistent that he couldn’t ignore it, couldn’t shut it out. He knew that he couldn’t get used to it; that he mustn’t let himself. He spent the next week trying to forget what it felt like to hold Lew in his naked arms, to press his lips to the mark on his brow, faded now to a pale streak, white like the tail of a comet. 

That felt like another lifetime now, with the sun setting behind the mountains and turning them black against the darkening sky. Time passed like wine flowing from the mouths of those bottles they kept tipping to their lips, drops spilling from the corners of their mouths, down their chins, wiping them away with the backs of their hands. Mirth rolling from their eyes and sweeping over him in warm waves, and Dick felt a little drunk on it himself, on their happiness and relief. The night air grew chilly. Their laughter subsided to restful sighs and mumbled curses, and Dick felt a truth settle in. Looking around this circle, into the drowsy, grinning faces of his friends, he knew that he loved them in a way that he would never love anyone else. 

“Alright Captain,” Lip said finally, struggling to pull Speirs to his feet. “Let’s get you to bed.” 

“Captain. Carwood,” Ron mumbled, like the words were marbles rolling around in his mouth. Lip took his wrist and hooked his arm around his neck, wrapping his other arm around Ron’s waist. 

“Oh Carwood, my Carwood,” Dick heard Ron saying, his face buried in Lip’s neck as Lip led him carefully across the balcony. 

He looked at Nix, amused. “Are we that obvious?” he murmured. Nix just looked down at the sharp line of Dick's thigh pressed against his, and a smile spread slowly across his face. 

“Hey Harry,” he asked after a moment, his eyes locked on Dick's. “Think it’s time to call it a night?”

“And leave you two unchaperoned?” Harry sunk lower in his chair, stretching his legs across the table, boots crossed at his ankles. “Unlikely.” 

Nix just shook his head faintly, raising his shoulders in a tiny shrug. Harry’s chin fell to his shoulder and his face went slack. Within a minute, his breathing had deepened into gentle snores.

“What about you,” Dick asked Nix. “How are you feeling?”

“How do I look?”

Dick’s eyes swept down his stubbled face, his wrinkled collar. “A little worse for the wear.” 

Lew chuckled at that, pulled Dick closer. “Well,” he began thoughtfully, taking a deep breath and sighing it out again. “I think I might have a few more laps in me yet.” His eyes were almost black in the dim light as he gazed into Dick’s. “Kiss me.” 

Dick didn’t even check to see if Harry was still asleep. Cupping the back of Lew’s head, he dropped his chin, tipped his head to the side, and felt Lew’s mouth, firm and wet and sweet, pressed to his. 

He could barely make out the jagged edges of the mountains against the sky as he moved in to kiss Lew again, and he didn’t chase it away this time, the thought he couldn’t help but think.

_A fellow could get used to this._


End file.
